package of papers entrusted to him by the Mexican German ambassador.
Had this raider gotten into the open seas and taken captive a faster and better equipped ship, it might have done a very considerable damage to shipping, just as did the several German raiders which for a time harrassed the Allied commerce. That her career was stopped at the outset was due to the keenness of a legless newsboy, anxious to do his bit for the country whose uniform he once had worn. There is enough, let us repeat, in this very story to give hope to every crippled soldier coming back from France—for this, taken in all its bearings, was about as important a piece of work as this busy division had, and is one of the biggest of all the A. P. L. cases.
The A. P. L. did not disband at the signing of the Armistice, and it is well that it did not. San Diego, like many another city, has had more than its share of bootlegging and vice investigations to carry on, owing to the fact that the growing feeling of license, which had developed since the Armistice, had spread among our troops. Among those quartered near San Diego, there were, of course, some not above reproach, and the bootlegger was known here as elsewhere. This pleasant and peaceful town in the sun-kissed South also had its share of the German-born. It would take a Luther Burbank, perhaps, to change them, and even Luther "would need time."
There was one man of great wealth naturalized in California in 1898, who held a prominent position in San Diego business life. He was known to have been in close touch with all the famous Germans, and had a pretty good insight into affairs American and Mexican. When we went into the war, this suspect became distinctly pro-German and was one of the most active propagandists along the border, apparently entirely forgetful of the fact that he owed allegiance to the United States. Being well acquainted with the German population in Mexico, he and others are alleged to have aided in the establishment of a wireless plant in Mexico, and to have financed people who ought not to have been financed, in view of their past records. It was charged against him by fellow-citizens that he worked to some extent with German money; that he was connected, at least indirectly, with the
